Word: specializing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...least three plausible theories: 1) The killing inflamed long-smoldering resentment between the military and the Central Intelligence Agency, with the Green Berets caught in the middle. It is said that Abrams made an issue of the case as a warning to the CIA to stop using the Special Forces to do its dirty work. 2) The victim was an extremely important agent, possibly a special emissary from President Thieu to Hanoi or a North Vietnamese courier who had already been granted immunity. This would explain the CIA's belated effort to rescind its execution order. It would also...
...nearly a decade after a new Special Forces group was set up at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1952 to cope with guerrilla forces, the organization languished. At first, the group's members were permitted to wear the Special Forces' distinctive green berets, borrowed from Britain's World War II commandos, within the confines of Fort Bragg. In 1956, the headgear was banned altogether because it looked "too foreign...
...Special Forces now number between 9,000 and 10,000 men. The officers come from other branches of the Army, to which they normally return; the enlisted men, all volunteers, tend to spend their entire military careers in the Special Forces. The operating units are scattered around the continents: 3,000 in South Viet Nam, 400 in northeastern Thailand, 800 in Okinawa, 250 in Bad Toelz just south of Munich in West Germany, 800 in the Panama Canal Zone, and 3,000 in training at Fort Bragg...
President John F. Kennedy, who read James Bond novels and foresaw the need for countering insurgency warfare, particularly in beleaguered Southeast Asia, gave a new lease of life to the Special Forces when he took office. The green beret was reinstated-almost enshrined. Said J.F.K. in 1962: "The green beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom." Around that time, 600 members of the Special Forces were serving as advisers in South Viet Nam. In those palmy days, the Green Berets were the darlings...
There have long been reports that the Green Berets also employ some dirty ways-if occasionally necessary ones. It is as easy to confirm such reports as it is to get the CIA to admit that it engages in spying on other countries. Nonetheless, the Special Forces have been accused of torturing and killing prisoners, parachuting poisoned foodstuffs into enemy camps, and slipping doctored ammunition, designed to explode on use, into enemy arms caches...